In the Parker Pyne short story The Case of the Discontented Soldier, Freda Clegg is a young woman working as a clerk in the Vacuum Gas Company with lodgings at Notting Hill Gate. She was an orphan, her father, an ex-sea captain, having died when she was eight and her mother some three years before the events in the story. Slightly bored with her life, she paid Parker Pyne a fee of 3 guineas for some excitement.
Freda was described as about twenty-one or twenty-two, fair-haired and blue-eyed, "pretty in a rather colourless sort of way. Madeleine de Sara had earlier assessed that she fitted the kind of woman Major Charles Wilbraham, another of Parker Pyne's clients, would like.
Portrayals[]
Freda Clegg is played by Patricia Garwood in the TV adaptation of the story. There, she was classified by Madeleine de Sara and Miss Lemon as a "Type 4". This classification system was not featured in the original story, but entirely plausible given Parker Pyne and Miss Lemon's mutual preference for handling things in an orderly way. In the original story, Parker Pyne got her name from a list of clients filed under "Schedule B".